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here chicky chicky chicky

Thursday, May 14, 2009

My latest obsession - spawned by an ad on CL that didn’t even pan out - is raising some hens in my backyard as egg-layers.   Where did that come from!?  

So I did a lot of reading into coops, and nest boxes, and tractors (not the tractory kind, the mobile chicken box kind) and breeds and all that jazz.  I suppose I should look into zoning laws, but I have to be honest I’m just assuming that I live in new mexico so there should be no problem.  

So far Back Yard Chickens looks like the best community to get advise and protips, and this site has lots of good links to branch out from.  To get some good ideas of how to build nesting boxes.

So, last Sunday I responded to a post, someone had too many pullets so I went to buy 3. 

From left to right, Darlene a Cuckoo Maran, Peggy Sue an Americauna, and Abigail a Delaware.  So far, Abi is definitely the boss hen, and the boldest and most inquisitive.  I’ve got them in a penned in grassy area, with a totally ramshackle coop that I built from scraps, so they just put themselves to bed at night in there.  They’re very chatty and mostly stick together doing chickeny .. things.  Aspen thinks it’s all very curious and wants very much to be allowed to check them out up close, but the one time I let her in she gave Peggy a heart attack chasing her, so .. seperate for now.  I was going to give them the run of the yard but they don’t seem to care all that much.  They’re about 11 weeks old, and won’t start laying till august probably.  May also pick up a Rhode Island Red a little later.  They should lay a nice assortment of eggs ranging from blueish-green to tan to dark brown.  Which reminds me, a compilation of some egg recipes which I may need to keep in mind later!

Speaking of eggs, while I was building the coop from scraps that are piled up in the shed and lean-to area, a Robin was totally zooming around angrily.  I realized she had a nest on top of some racked 1×2s I wanted to use so I sort of patted around the next and realized it had eggs in it.   So, I left that wood be, and a few days later baby robins appeared! I may try and get a shot of the gaping mouths its pretty cute, but tucked up under a rafter, so we’ll see.  

Had a nice visit in Cincinnati last weekend, we went and shot some CRG rollergirls who were skating against Madison WI.  And did some exploring, oh and saw Star Trek in IMAX (Awesome (I heart Zachary Quinto)).  Oh and I finally tried some Skyline Cincinnati Chili.  Which is served to you on top of spaghetti (?) with lots of shredded cheese.  It tasted of garam masala, the greek spice I use when I’m making moussaka or w/e and indeed the founder was greek.  It’s an odd combo.  On the one hand it’s tasty, but at the same time there’s just something not quite right about it. 

Also got some nice things in the mail!  Jase sent me Florida grapefruits from when he was in sarasota, so those have been delicious and wonderful!  And lisa sent me some beautiful little japanese style bowls since aspen broke all mine :(  And Andrew sent me an Easter Pez!  It’s hello kitty, and sitting on my desk at work dispensing lemon pez to all who want.  Don’t know what I did to deserve all that, but, awesome!  Oh and Jase is sending me some audiobooks on CD becaues I’ll be driving like 500-600 miles this weekend to and from various events, and then on Thursday I’m driving up to denver to meet him there! So we can explore the Rocky Mountain National Park.  Super excited for that :D

And that photo was one from the CRG derby.  I’m not 100% sure on the crop, I may go back and re-do that. 

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Soup and vegetables!

Thursday, April 30, 2009

In the days that followed returning too food, at least my cravings for junk food disappeared in the face of being able to eat!  So that was something, I didn’t just run out and eat a double-double.  I made the first vegetable soup monday, and it was in fact pretty good!  Maybe a little bland, but there’s nothing in there but vegetables after all.  This was easily solved with pistou which was fun because I got to use my mortal and pestle which mostly collects dust in the cabinet, to mash up some cloves garlic with fresh basil, sea salt and parmesan.  You add a little dab of this to the soup when serving and mix it all up. mmmm.  Most of the time when I recipe calls for garlic I just add an extra clove or 3 for love, which I did in this case … without really thinking that through. raw garlic is not a thing to be trifled with!  So it was definitley strong and burny on it’s own, but good in the soup.  Later in the week I picked up some black olives and incorporated them at a high ratio to make a really good tapenade for some crusty bread.  

In the vein of home cooking, some recipes to try from this slate article. I’d like to make yogurt and bagels.

Later in the week I made the roasted vegetable soup.  I think I didn’t roast them quite long enough, and even though I halved the amount of carrots, they still dominated the flavors.  I didn’t strain the soup because that seems wasteful, but in a fancy restaurant I’m sure they would have because my blender can’t quite puree carrot all the way, so it was .. texturey.   That’s fine!  Anyway, it was good but not memorable.  I’ve been trying to rememeber for weeks now a certain soup I made years ago that was simple and delicious, but I just remebered it was tomato / coconut milk based, and so probably thai, and I think had some white fish.  Armed with that, I do see recipes out there, so I think that must be it! 

In the days post-lemonade I was so excited about plotting about meals and planning around ingrediants that I decided to look into local CSAs (community supported agriculture) again.  And I found one that actually will deliver boxes to los alamos! It’s Los Poblanos Organics and I signed up for an every-other-week plan.  They have a cute little newsletter that goes out each week with the vegetables, which for my first week included salad greens, baby spinich, arugula, carrots avacados and kiwis, grapefruit and apples. And you can schedule extras like, maybe you want more greens, or some other local stuff like goat cheese or honey or jam all using a fancy little webform.  It’s all extremely convienant and fun! 

So today I find myself with some arugula to use, and thought I’d do some fish up with it.  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll make some more soup.  What can I say, I’ve been in that kind of mood.  The fish didn’t come out super, I braised a whole tilapia in some wine and other delicious things and threw in the arugula to wilt, but I still found the flavor of the greens to be too strong, and the fish rather bland, although the reduced sauce was tangy and good over it all.  Oh well.  Have some catfish to try and make my thai tomato soup if I get a chance tonight, I think I have to go to ABQ for derby practice.

Oh, and the farmer’s market starts up next week I think, on Thursdays, just in case I somehow don’t get enough veggies from the CSA!  And also very cool, the lab is serving meals on Thursdays with goods from the farmers market :)

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Day 8

Monday, April 20, 2009

Today is the day when I will feel transcendence!  … or not.   As suspected I feel pretty much like I did yesterday, although, I do feel like I have a better control on the cravings.  Saturday i wanted everything in the world from chinese good to burgers to pizza and sunday was then comparatively much better.  In the morning I hallucinated that i was smelling grilled cheese sammiches (or maybe my neighbors were making lunch?) And I really wanted one, but it passed and the rest of the day was pretty straightforward.  Drank my lemonade.  I couldn’t bear to have tea in the evening saturday night, so I made it around noon sunday.  And then, around 3 the cramping started and got really bad around 4 and then … just kept going.  I couldn’t leave the house because my body wasn’t done shuddering till almost 6 and if I walked around too much before long a cramp would send me back to the couch to lie down and wait it out.  Pretty miserable.  And I was like .. you know what?  I’m done poisoning myself every day, this is just not worth it.  That and the damn salt water flushes which also failed to work for me.  Maybe I needed to drink more salt, or down it faster but … whatever.  The willpower and paring down aspects of a fast I think have accomplished everything I wanted, and I’m looking forward to resuming real food!  But the purging / salt water / laxatives half?  Yeah, no thanks.  Not doing that again and couldn’t really be said to recommend it.   Where I am now, is, are there fasting regiments that don’t feature the torture of willfully-inflicted diarrhea every day?  Is harsh herbal stimulation really required or will you be just fine without it?  Who knows.  The crackpot websites claim that if you don’t flush all the toxins out that your lemonade regiment has freed up, they’ll just accumulate in unsavory places or .. something.  I don’t know. 

So anyway, having decided I won’t be doing the internal garden hose washing of my pipes any more, I could either continue to eat lemonade for 2 more days or just feel good about doing a full week!  I have chosen the latter.  Consequently, I bought like 10 lbs of vegetables late last night (the best time for shopping!) in order to make some vegetable soup tonight.  During the day I’ve been alternating some lemonade and some orange juice, as various sites recommend coming off a fast with juice for a day or 2 and progressing to raw fruits and veges for a day and then some broth.  To which I say: eh!  Maybe I’ll regret that later but seriously I’ve reached the point where I cannot drink any more acidic beverages, or peppery acidic beverages for that matter. My mouth hurts.  So I’m just making soup tonight. 

Anyway, although I didn’t see the “detoxing” effects and results indicated for a master cleanse like headaches or nausea or other aches and pains, nor the white tongue (ew) or the black tar poops, I do still feel like it was a good experiment in two regards:  A) now I can opinionate loudly about it in conversation should the topic come up and B) I actually feel pretty good. 

What I should do in order to keep the good healthy eating moving forward is plan a weekly menu and shopping list so I have all the appropriate materials and a plan on hand at all times!  We’ll see how that goes.  And I can plan around skate practice in santa fe to get truly delicious produces and meats at the TJs or whole foods.  When I was living in MD I shopped at whole foods all the time.  I must have been rich back then!  Hopefully for just produce / meat and not the glorious prepackaged or prepared foods it’ll be ok! heh. 

So for this week what I’ve picked out so far - (starting with soups for EZ digestion)

Vegetable soup with pistou looks basic and good although I wish there was some barley but that might make it too busy with the beans, so next time. 

Roasted carrot and tomato soup with basil  definitely into the fresh basil for the first 2 nights.  This also adds a bit of milk, I was going to hold off on dairy but depending on how much the first soup makes this might not be till thursday. 

Speaking of basil, this reminds me to mention my favorite new website, stilltasty that has guidelines on how long various food products will remain good for eating under different storage conditions and what the best way to store them is!  How to store basil.   Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong. 

Also going to make more exciting salads, so when this recipe popped up today, it seems like an easy win: Green salad with almonds, goat cheese, and dates. Mmm. Also as silly as it sounds I’ve never actually just made a salad dressing with vinegar + oil so it seems high time I look into that!  Anyway a nice salad seems like a good way to reintroduce some meats like a little grilled chicken.  I’m also liking the looks of this pea salad! But I’ll admit I will be adding some bacon to it.  

And lastly in terms of baked goods goodness, this recipe for apple and oat muffin top cookies looks like something I need in my mouth sooner rather than later.

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Day 6 of lemonade

Saturday, April 18, 2009

I grow increasingly vexxed as the days pass.  The lemonade is now almost unbearable to drink after like 3 glasses so I know I’m not getting enough calories or … lemon juice… going to mix some more up shortly and try and get my daily quota in.   Hungry a lot, but it doesn’t bother me.  I can smell food with a new intensity!  I seriously picked out some lo mein from 1/2 a mile away.  While in santa fe today after derby I swung by whole foods to get some more lemons (sigh) and was besieged by so. much. delicious. temptations.  Endless caraffes of steaming heavenly soup, the hot bar of prepared food, little sample trays of delicious tidbits .. it was horrible.  I made it out with some yogurt for later and lemons and 10% less sanity.

Energy is still high.  Gave up on the salt water and vowed to do tea 2x a day and then… didn’t.  This morning I woke up at 5 am with vicious stomach cramps all shaky and miserable from the damn tea and wondered why the hell I was poisoning myself with this.  When I’m not otherwise distracted I pretty much spend my time alternately trying to talk myself into giving up because this is stupid and having some food, or staying the course because, 4 days left.  Not sure how I’ll break the fast yet, some sites recommend doing a day or 2 of orange juice first and then broth and then vegetables.  But .. I really don’t want to drink juice for even a day.  This is not a thing I’m craving.  I’m not going to leap right into a rare steak dinner or anything but … how bad can some delicious soup right away be?  Exactly.

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lemonade

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

I’ve been feeling crappy and low-energy lately, like no matter how much I sleep I can’t wake up and I’m groggy and slow a lot.  And my brother started on this crazy lemonade purge / master cleanse which I’ve read about before and I thought I’d give it a shot.  Basically the intention is to consume only a lemonade juice for 10 days while doing a detox regiment.   My Dr agreed that it wouldn’t kill me, and scientific evidence be damned, I thought I’d try and see what happened. 

So I started on Monday, with the lemonade. I didn’t really read up on the whole thing fully, and so didn’t do any purging or flushing, just drank some 10 cups of spicy lemonade. Tuesday night I finally started doing the other parts which are a senna tea in the evening and salt water flush in the morning.  The senna tea I expected to make me cramp up and … so it did.  So that was sort of unpleasant, waking up at 3:30am with an upset tummy.  In the morning I mixed up 750 mL of salt water but only managed to drink half of it.  Maybe I’ll try that again tomorrow with … different salt.  These nutcase boards recommend using Celtic gray sea salt for “milder” taste … which, whatever but even if that’s a fail there’s no such thing as having too much sea salt around the kitchen! 

So today marks day 3, and other than the unpleasant stomach effects after the tea or salt water, it’s … ok so far.  Boring, mostly.  I spend a lot of time fantasizing about all the different wonderful foods in the world.  Like.. pizza and easter chocolate and tuna melts and .. pretty much anything edible that crosses my path.  Already planning out the vegetable soup I’ll make to come back to the world of the eating.  I have to go skate tonight, we’ll see how my energy is.  Feeling a lot of doubt from the internet about this venture.  Pressing onward anyhow!

The recipe is as follows:

for one glass mix 2 tbs fresh-squeezed lemon juice and 2 tbs grade B maple syrup and 1/10 tsp cayenne into 8 oz (1 cup) spring water.

To make a days mix I juice 5 lemons and 10 cups water with 1 cup syrup and tsp cayenne.

The salt water flush in the morning is 2 teaspoons sea salt to 1 quart warm water (gag).

And then herbal tea in the evening.

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And so,

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

it’s been months, it’s like I have limited energy for creative output and lately instead of writing I’ve been doing a lot more photography.  Really delving into the technical sides of it and understanding the why of techniques.  It’s been fun, after branching into more sports type photography, I got called upon to take portraits for the derby team, and against my judgement we had to do it indoors in a weirdly lit little rink we use.  So, I bought my first ever off-camera flash!  A speedlight 430EXII.  The portraits were very stressful for me and I was feeling really sick that day so I was not on my game at all and messed up a few simple things, wasn’t thinking clearly at all.  But, they came out mostly usable and it was a learning experience, I guess!  I’d actually like to repeat that but I have to work up the courage to beg/persuade people to pose for me.  And having a flash is cool! Also picked up another lens, the 17-55 IS which is fantastic and I loooove it. 

This weekend for Easter I went with a group from Flickr to explore this abandoned penitentiary, which was the site of some very violent rioting in 1980, and shut down in ‘98, I think.  It was full of many such cool things as: gas chamber for executions! burn marks from where a human was torched! Giant industrial overns where possibly people were creamated!  Axe marks from a beheading!  And lots of fascinating prison art and general decay.  A lot of the photographers brought models and spent a lot of time with multiple lights and gels creating elaborate shoots, and I sort of wanted to hang out and watch that, but at the same time 4 hours was not enough time for me to explore to my heart’s content in there.  It was definitely good having a real flash though, the place was quite dark.

Self portrait in the gas chamber.

Anyway, have a set of images from that outing here.

Had a visit from Jase early March, which was nice. He planned an awesome outing, which the weather didn’t fully cooperate with - when he came to NM last year (I was out of town) and had asked for advice on where to go and what to do, he ended up finding a jeep tour guy who carted them around.  Later on, I also started talking to this guy who is also a budding photographer.  Anyway, he scheduled that guy to take us around to some awesome ruins or ghost towns, but the weather had other ideas.  It was so rainy the day before and rain/snow that day (and COLD) that the mud roads were not traversable, just sooo slippery.  And visibility was quite low!   But we did get to see some cool places, and get hassled by natives 

 

Cerro de Guadelupe in the mist

Cerro de Guadelupe in the mist

And I picked a bunch of salt cedar, the red bush there to pretty up the house.  It’s a non-native invasive species that hogs more than it’s fair share of water so I feel totally ok chopping it down, it’s great!

Saturday we headed back down to abq and checked in at a neat old hotel downtown, the Hotel Blue.  Cool art deco vibe, and cheap and convienant!  Then we went to catch some live music at the Launchpad which was in fact awesome and fun.  Shit like that is what I miss most living in the middle of nowhere with no people >.<  Just like… dranks and music!  And then we stagged back to the hotel yaaayyy no driving!  Perfect. 

Only 2 weeks left till our first rollerderby bout in front of an actual paying audience.  I’m nervous but I also feel like last week I actually started to get the hang of being a useful blocker, both offensive and defensive so hopefully I’ll be able to do more than skate around looking lost and getting beat up.

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Phone lust

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Just because I finally managed to figure out when my current 2 year cell phone contract is up:

My contract is up on July 2, 2009. Early cancellation is $175.  No pro-rating available. Grrrr.

Sigh - I had been hoping it was June, but was off by a month.  And maybe it’s because it’s been so unseasonably warm and pleasant here, all 67 degrees and sunny in February, but it feels like spring now, which means summer is just around the corner!  But no, it turns out July is still the better part of 5 months away.  This little article extremely tidily sums up while I’m so heartily geeking out over the palm Pre, but the only competition is possibly coming out with a new version around the same timeframe… a new version with flash capabilities?  Time will tell, but I’ll give the iphone a fair shot, after all the majority of my preferred tech devices are apple these days so it would fit right in at home.   The link sums up the obvious things that the pre trumps the iphone in, and there there’s some little things - like how the iphone won’t sync to google stuff without destroying your existing contacts and making everything look bad.  And Ijust learned when txting on an iphone, you don’t know when you reach or surpass the 160 character limit! This is tragic.  And I really like real keyboards.  And the MMS thing (seriously now).

Speaking of tech, just got a new lens!  I was fretting all friday afternoon over whether or not UPS would leave it at my door - I left a signed note requesting that, and called the UPS dispatching to send a message to the driver asking him to call me so I could rush home - this is totally at the driver’s discretion, and in the past it has worked for me, but not this time.  I was refreshing the tracking site when I saw — Delivered!  Ran home to claim my prize.  It’s a new Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 and it is a weighty beast!  I like that this one keeps all the focusing internal, by which I mean the barrel doesn’t actually get longer or shorter as you go in for the close-up.  No IS, which is what I had planned for my next lens, but that will have to be the next stage.  I’ll be looking to pick up something in the 20-50mm range with IS and then probably see about selling the tamron 28-75.

Anyhow, ended up carpooling up to Colorado Springs with 3 other people for the Four Corners Rollerderby Tournament and crashed on a hotel floor for maximum cheap.  Took around 2,400 shots, I think, did 2 bouts on Saturday and took photos almost nonstop from noon to 8pm Sunday with pauses to transfer the CF cards to laptop at halftimes. It was extremely tiring!  We left town around 9pm that evening and although I wasn’t able to sleep, I just had my eyes closed the entire drive just about, blessed relief.  Got in around 3am, and then stayed up late last night starting to work on the processing so I’m still in sleep deficit at this point.  Anyway, the tournament was a blast even through they didn’t win it all.  Denver studied up on their play style and drilled to work on breaking up the pack and controlling our blockers individually… it worked fiendishly well. 

This is one of my favorite shots: A denver roller doll jammer catches some air while our blocker amanda jaminatya cringes. Lol

And one of our jammers, muffin, skating all out

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you’d think I was better with a tape measure

Friday, February 20, 2009

So, Ed Grothus of the Black Hole passed away this past week.  The place was only a block away from me and I didn’t spend nearly as much time exploring there as I always intended to.  Anyway, I was browsing around Coudal for today’s layer tennis match, and saw they have a little 5-part movie! The behind the scenes is sort of a look at the weird town I live in as well.

Last weekend I had 4 days off for a holiday and managed to get very little done or finished.  I wanted this bed on CL that I had seen, so I went to scope it out on the previous thursday and decided I wanted it, but wasn’t sure it would actually fit into my house, well up the stairs to the bedroom actually.  Decided to just go for it, however.  So Friday of last week a friend came up from abq to help me move and I rented a uhaul truck in santa fe.  Drove it to Espanola, and up to los alamos and back, for a total of 90 miles… for local rentals you don’t get any free miles so that hurt.  Also they charged me $50 on gas!  When I picked the truck up, it wasn’t full it was “a little bit under half” so I squinted at the needle and tried to remember where it was.  On the way back I stopped for gas and … tried to guesstimate how much I’d need to put in to get it back there? But I didn’t know how big the tank even was??  The point is, it’s fucking retarded to send out rental vehicles that aren’t already topped off.  So I put in what I thought was right and started the truck and the needle moved very very very slowly up.  Seemed like it was good, so we set off, and … the needle started to dip back down?? And when I parked it, it sagged even more.  Fucking bullshit, so it looked like it was low by 1 or 2 gallons and they charged me $50?? Total bill came to $170 for seriously 4 hours of use.  So I was pissed about the truck, and to add to it all, the bed frame doesn’t fit upstairs!  Total spacial fail on my part, it’s like the clearance in the stairwell was enough, but you had to come in through the kitchen, and that door way was much shorter so the tail end of the frame would get jammed.  Also , it looked normal in the bedroom I checked it out in, but mine is like… fractionally smaller with poor doorway choices on the long wall meaning I’m really limited in where I can even put it and the chest of drawers doesn’t really work at all.  So I’ve been pissed off for about a week now, regretting having bought this bed.  My choices being: try to sell it to someone else from my living room, no less, or just suck it up and cut it apart.   So I cut it apart.   So at this point, I have all the pieces upstairs and some metal brackets/screws but my annoyance level has been too high to deal with the fucking mess. Argh.

This weekend there’s a rollerderby tournament in Colorado.  I’ve gotten myself on the press list (so official!) which is sort of awesome and novel for me, and I’m going to try to take a shit ton of photos of skaters.  Saturday will be practice for me, i.e. bouts I don’t personally care about, and then sunday will be 2 bouts that the NM Munecas are skating.  It’s a 5 1/2 hour trip and I both want to drive myself, because I like having my own car around, or try and snag a ride with someone leaving out of santa fe.   If I come back sunday night, it would be leaving around 9pm to drive 5+ hours which is pretty bad on my own but I don’t really want to stay an extra night to burn a vacation day on driving.  So.

Anyway, bought another lens for my camera for the bout which is a bit of a gamble since I don’t know what the lighting conditions will be, but I picked up something more intended for sports use, should be faster than the tamron.  Hopefully I get it today, since I’m not home to sign, I left a note for UPS I don’t know if they roll that way. Fingers crossed.

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one whole fish

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

So, the other day andrew and I were talking, as we are wont to do, and … cookbooks came up.  Specifically, how the latest edition of a particular cookbook, already known for its straighforward style, would now have “a reduced emphasis on professional techniques,” and we were pondering what that might mean, exactly.  I suggested that maybe it meant if you don’t know what braising means, the book just doesn’t have the time to teach you!  Which of course, led me to wonder what braising is, exactly.  This led, naturally, to wikipedia.  To my mind, it was a technique for cooking meat that involved dancing, searing flames.   Probably because a brazier is a container for hot, dancing flames, and also brazing which involves the application of hot torchy flames to a metal.  Turns out there is no relation, and braising is a way to cook meats in a covered pot with a variable amount of liquid, using heat time and moisture to make meats tender and luscious.   Thus enriched, we were talking about things which benefit from braising such as the ubiquitous pot roast, and andrew mentioned also fish.   I was like fish!?  And we started looking for recipes and decided that there was nothing else to be done than try and braise a whole fish the next night.

So, anyway Andrew who has a proper asian market got himself a whole Pompano, and I  … got what the grocery store in NM carried, which was a single whole trout.  Trout it is!  I tend to cook Thai by default, so the recipe I ended up with is sort of inspired by those flavors.  Thai people love a whole fish, but typically they pan fry the fish and cook the sauce separately and drizzle it all over.   While delicious, this does not fulfill the requirements to braise, so I took the basic flavors and just … skipped the pan fry part.

I used:
about 1.5″ of ginger, sliced thickly
1 shallot, chopped coarsely
5 gloves garlic, chopped coarsely
green onions - chopped up the thicker base, reserve the greens for garnish
a chili pepper - I used a halapeno, sliced and de-seeded
cilantro for garnish, lime to taste

and for the sauce, well I don’t really measure, so approximately:
2 tbs Tamarind concentrate/slush
2 tbs Fish sauce
1 tbs Soy sauce
~2 tbs brown sugar
~1 tbs rice vinegar
some dashes of sweet thai chili sauce
Water to cover (My fish was not actually covered due to size constraints, but it cooked through in the tightly sealed pot no problem!  And of course too much water makes it harder to get a proper sauce. I used a cup at most, probably less)

heated up some oil to give a quick saute to the aromatic componants till they looked good and smelled better and then … jammed the fish in.  It was maybe a little bit too big for my chosen pot. And poured the sauce all over.  Note: if you mix flavors by tasting, as I do, if you’re not used to using tamarind, be forewarned, it will taste fairly terrible before you cook it all up with something.  This is normal, have faith! Just try and get the balance of your sweet/spicy/salty/sour components so you can detect all 4, and nothing dominates even if it doesn’t taste super.

I let it cook for a totally random amount of time which may have been half an hour, and then took the lid off to let the sauce reduce a bit.  I carefully took the fish out and arranged it and really cranked the burner to boil down the sauce left inside quickly, with all the sugar it got nice and thick and gooey, but I took the picture before I added the thicker sauce.  Tossed on some cilantro and the chopped green onions and got a heaping bowl of rice.  The fish was tender and wonderfully cooked, and the sauce was tangy sweet salty and hot. A properly delicious thai fish, if I say so myself!

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real world

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Back from my trip, and studiously avoiding paperwork, even though completion of said paperwork will result in a theoretical return of money to me!  I need to fax a bunch of stuff to the insurance agent and vie for rental car reimbursement, and complete my mortgage refinance application even though rates are going back up >: (  and I guess it’s tax season as well now isn’t it.  Charming.  My trip to SF is still not approved, thanks to the AD, so I cannot submit for reimbursements there.   I’m stalling on paying the conference entry fee itself (sorry guys!) so as to have the minimum balance possible hanging over me in the interim.

San Francisco was lovely, of course, this time there was much less drunken antics, but I ranged farther afield and overall had a better time, I’d say.  2 years ago, dave and jamie were in fine drinking form, but nowadays jamie has a shattered pelvis and dave is married and closing on a house, so times were more subdued.  But still!  Got in sunday and after checking in and orienting myself I investigated the bus system and took myself to chinatown - the chinese new year party was afoot and there were firecrackers and ancient (and pushy!) chinese grandmas everywhere.  I wandered a bit taking everything in and eventually settled on a place for some thai for dinner - it was extremely good, and I’m a harsh judge of thai food.  But there was not a meal in this town that disappointed this trip!

I ended up walking a lot after eating, because the night was so damn pleasant, and also I couldn’t find my bus, thanks to a network of one way streets and me not completely mapping out the return route in advance.  Eventually I walked my way to the little italy stretch of Columbus and noted that it looked extremely delicious there, and vowed to come back!  Then I found my bus.

Later that night, dave and j swung by and we went to pay a visit to jamie who is housebound for a while. I got extremely sleepy pretty early on though after getting at at 5 in a different time zone, so back to the hotel!

The conference itself was great, so glad I went.  Saw lots of familiar faces there!  From NIST, and FM, and my WPI crew :) I’ve been invited to submit a resume some places. I still struggle with the notion that I should finish my MS before I seriously try, however.  But this was good motivation to get back in the game, seeing all the fun research going on!  Monday was all the Wildland Urban Interface stuff, lots of great presenters, that track has really grown since 2 years ago.  I’m going to see if I can get some collaboration going between NIST and LANL  - they have rapidly deployable instruments to measure fires, and need forests that are burning - and we have forests!  So I am checking in on the schedule of our prescribed burns.  That would be extremely awesome.

Monday went out for sushi with a friend I met distance learning at WPI, we got sushi at North Beach, which was phenomonal.  M also knows a bit about sake, which I do not, so he and the lovely waitress offered tips and suggestions, and we tried 2 kinds. I found the hot sake to be unpleasant, to me it smelled like vinegar, but the cold (nigori) sake was quite good - we had Sayuri which was new to M, and I would definitely get again.  The menu at this place was nuts, we ordered everything we had never heard of, all to great success!  They have an “ultimate” roll which is foie gras and eel wrapped in avacado and tuna - it was bloody insane! So good. We also got hawaiian style poke tuna, and a ton of sashimi including Ankimo (Monkfish liver) and sea urchin among more standard favorites.  All in all wonderful!

Tuesday was a bit slow, conference-wise and I bailed on a few sessions + lunch to take a boat out to alcatraz, being located right on the wharf and all.  Grabbed a crab sammich from the wharf on my way over naturally. That was well worth doing as well - quick boat ride, and a quick orientation speech, then set to wandering.  The place smells wonderful! (unexpected) but there’s a ton of landscaping and flowers everywhere.  Picked up my self guided audio tour, and wandered around.  Got distracted for a while in cell block D where the light through the barred windows and cells were tantalizing me with stripes and shadows all over.  Ran back to the conference later and to my chagrin a couple people were like “HEY!!?? We’ve been looking for you!!!”  .. haha busted.

Dinner that night was Italian, in little italy.  This time, we went to North Beach Restaurant (sensing a naming trend here) after I wandered up and down columbus for a while analyzing every posted menu and being picky.  A troop of people were just bustling in and one of them assured us this was the best italian in SF, so heartened in we went.  Earlier, on Alcatraz I had been chilling at rock level where the waves come in and smash up against the cliffs and it smelled so oceany that I had a craving for fresh shellfish, specifically I wanted clams or mussles linguine.  This place had that, and omg it was amazing.

Wed sessions were all about forensics and investigations, just interesting stuff!  Dave and J picked me up later that day and we went out for some Indian food and drinks.

Thursday morning I had till 12:30 to kill so I packed up my laptop and wandered to a localish little cafe place to settle in with some coffee, a bagel with lox (one of my favorite things in the world) and a wireless signal. I was chatting with the guy at the counter, who asked if I was from around here? I was like no just visiting QQ, and he said I looked like a local.  I’m not sure what that means, but I’m taking it as a compliment!

To the airport then, and on to Ohio.  Flight was uneventful, watched The Duchess and had a row to myself on a very-full flight (score!). In chicago was forced to go outside to board the tiny puddle jumper plane, exposed to intensely windy misery, missed SF. Got in late to Dayton where Jase was just arriving and we headed home!  So happy to see my dog!!  :)  She seemed to have fared well, one ear bite aside.  The two girls tussled and waved their teeth around but by and large I think they had fun together. Mostly. Aspen’s not eating as heartily now that it’s not a competition , I noticed!

Friday we got my car back YAAAAAAAAY.  It looks great! internet shout-out to Ricky @ Burtons collision in cincinnati, who was the only person in this whole mess who actually took the time to call me and tell me how things were going.  Front end is all new, paint is good, my old hoodscoop is installed, and they even put my driving lights back in, which required a bit of fabrication and fancy wiring.  It felt SO GOOD to get behind the wheel of a responsive car, my god.  And then I parked it and made Jase drive his car! Haha. I had a dream earlier that right after I got my car back I was driving in cinci and crashed it again and I was taking no chances.   So, then we went to Columbus to meet mom for lunch since she sort of missed out in the chaos of christmas this year.   We met at the Franklin Park Conservatory because there was a cafe there she wanted to check out, and who doesn’t like conservatories!?  Indeed, it was a very lovely place, they had an orchid show going on, and many excellent biosperes of different climate zones.  Also a cool voice tour system, there were little placards at plants of interest with a phone number and # number to call in and listen to a recorded message on your phone!  Pretty brilliant.  Lunch was tasty too!  Get the tomato basil soup. Also finally got to give mom her christmas presents, and she had some honey comb for me, Mmmmmmmm.

Saturday I packed up the car — I had to leave 90% of my Christmas stuff at Jase’s house for the last month, so there was actually a lot there!  Had to abandon the crate, it just wouldn’t fit for some mysterious reason, and it’s pretty busted up and aspen hates it anyhow.  We got breakfast and coffee for the road and around noon:30 I set out from Cinci on the drive home.   I had been borrowing jase’s old ipod for my trips with only a crappy radio, but my car has a vintage head unit I put in, with no aux input — but it did play mp3 CDs.  So, jase burned me CDs of 2 audiobooks!! <3  So I could finally finish Metatropolis, which bugged out on the ipod, and listen to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, read by himself.  Loved loved loved that story, and the reading as well was perfect!! I had no idea.  The world of audiobooks it not something I delve into much (ever) so I don’t know any favorites or anything yet, but just from Metatropolis I was forming opinions about good vs less good narration and Neil’s reading is absolutely spot-on, my favorite of all.  From Metatropolis, I didn’t like the first story at all, it was long and dull and pointless and I didn’t like the reader either (who is Col. Tigh on BSG, in fact a number of BSG cast members were tapped to read for the anthology) - very growly.  The other stories were better, I did like Scalzi’s story, and I thought that Lt. Gaeta did a very good job of reading it!  My favorite was the last reader, though, Stefan Rudnicki, who apparently narrated the Ender’s Game book series?  Anyway maybe hours were passed in this way, which REALLY helped the 28 hours I was on the road.  I shall have to remember that!

Made it 950 miles in around 14 hours before I had to stop and nap till daylight came, then pressed onward heavily fortified with caffein.  Got in around 2 pm I think?  Aspen started talking as soon as we got up the hill to los alamos and bouncing around in the backseat as we pulled in home.  I forced myself to stay awake till 10pm to try and get a solid nights sleep and get my head into the right timezone.  Oh and I finally got to chop some vegetables with my new christmas present knives! - so excellent.

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